Any marketer will tell you that Digital Optimization is crucial to ensure successful e-commerce operations and yield the best possible return on investment (ROI). This practice includes both A/B testing and website personalization: every website presents a unique set of features and designs, which must, in turn, be optimized through A/B testing.
Building a great website is, unfortunately, not simply a matter of following best practices. Even within a single industry, users will hold varied expectations based on your brand, communication style, target audience, funnel, etc. And while browsing the same website, users’ expectations can vary, with some knowing exactly what they want and others needing to explore, check your returns policy, learn about your sustainability initiatives, and so on.
We have all heard the hype about how AI has been revolutionizing how marketers approach experimentation. Generative AI offers new opportunities for optimizing every aspect of the user journey, allowing marketers to:
streamline testing,
create new online experiences,
and create new types of user segments for more precise personalized experiences that drive conversions.
This guest blog post was written by Rodolphe Dougoud, Project Lead at fifty-five—a leading data company that helps brands harness the potential of Generative AI and mitigate associated risks effectively with a comprehensive and pragmatic AI strategy, among other services.
Below, we’ll explore these three perspectives in depth, with real-life examples gleaned from AB Tasty’s new algorithm, Emotions AI, and fifty-five’s work with its clients around GenAI.
AI in Action for Experiences that Matter
Streamline testing
When thinking about A/B testing, you might immediately picture creating an experiment and launching it live on a website. However, the most time-consuming phases of the A/B testing process generally come before and after that: finding new features to try out in order to create a testing roadmap and analyzing the results of these tests. Here, AI can increase test velocity by helping to reduce bottlenecks hindering both of the aforementioned stages.
Test ideation
Your roadmap must not only be top-down but also bottom-up: pay close attention to insights from your UX designers, based on benchmarks from your competitors and industry trends, and data-driven insights based on your own analytics data. Here, AI can facilitate the process by analyzing large datasets (e.g., on-site Analytics data) to find insights humans might have missed.
Result analysis
Similarly, it’s essential to analyze the results of your tests thoroughly. Looking at one KPI can sometimes be enough, but it often represents only one part of a bigger story. An aptly-calibrated AI model can find hidden insights within your testing results.
While we generally know what data we want to access, the actual querying of that data can be time-consuming. Applying a GenAI model to your dataset can also allow you to query your data in natural language, letting the model pull the data for you, run the query, and create instant visualizations for major time gains.
Content creation
While not necessary for most tests, creating new content to be included in the testing phase can take a long time and impact your roadmap. While GenAI cannot produce the same quality of content as your UX team, a UX designer equipped with a GenAI tool can create more content faster. The model used can be trained with your design chart to ensure it integrates with the rest of your content. Overall, adding a GenAI tool as a complement to your design arsenal can yield substantial gains in productivity and, therefore, reinforce your testing roadmap timeline.
Create new online experiences
Marketers should not hesitate to experiment with AI to create unique and interactive experiences. Generative AI can create personalized content and recommendations that can engage users more effectively.
Consider, for instance, fifty-five’s recent work with Chronodrive, a grocery shopping and delivery app. We used AI to address a common user challenge (and, frankly, near-universal issue): deciding what to make for dinner.
With our innovative solution, taking a picture of the inside of your fridge will allow the app to create a recipe based on the ingredients it identifies, while a photo of a dish – taken at a restaurant or even downloaded from social media – will generate a recipe for said dish and its associated shopping list.
Artificial Intelligence opens new creative options that weren’t available with previous LLM models. Chronodrive’s solution may not be applicable to most companies, but every business can think back on their typical user’s pain points and conceptualize how GenAI could help ease them.
Create new types of user segments for more precise personalized experiences
When a customer enters a store, a salesperson can instantly personalize their experience by checking if they want to be helped or just want to browse, if they are discovering the brand or are already sold on it, if they require guidance or know precisely what they want… A website, on the other hand, necessitates extra effort to present the user with a similarly personalized experience.
Online, segmentation thus becomes indispensable to deliver the most satisfying user experience possible. Even during testing phases, deploying A/B tests on user segments makes achieving significant results more likely, as increased precision helps mitigate the risk of obtaining neutral results.
AI can analyze a wide array of user interactions on a given website to determine which elements drive the most conversions, or how different users respond to specific stimuli. This analysis can allow brands to classify users into new segments that could not have been available otherwise. For instance, fifty-five applied AI to split Shiseido’s website users between low and high-lifetime value segments. This allowed Shiseido to run differentiated A/B tests and personalize their website depending on the expected lifetime value of the user, resulting in a 12.6% increase in conversions.
Going even further, what if AI could read your emotions? AB Tasty’s new AI algorithm, Emotions AI, can automatically segment your audience into 10 categories based on emotional needs.
If a user needs to be reassured, the website can emphasize its free return policy
If they need clarity, the website can highlight factual information about your product
And if they need immediacy, the website can hide any unnecessary information to instead focus on its main CTAs
The model estimates the needs of the user by taking into consideration all of their interactions with the website: how long they wait before clicking, whether they scroll through an entire page, where their mouse hovers, how many times they click, etc. This enables stronger personalization, both during testing phases and when deploying online features, by letting you know exactly what your users need.
Want to Learn More?
If you would like to dive deeper into current experimentation trends, watch our webinar replay here, where fifty-five and AB Tasty explored key CRO case studies and more. And if you have any questions or insights you’d like to share, please leave a comment – we would love to hear from you!
Talia Wolf reveals how emotional marketing can revolutionize your experimentation process and lift conversions.
Taking a customer-centric approach to marketing, founder and CEO of Getuplift, Talia Wolf, harnesses the power of emotional marketing techniques to increase visitor conversions.
Her natural interest in conversion rate optimization (CRO) and experimentation was sparked through her early work in a social media agency, later moving on to become an expert in the field – consulting for many companies on the subject, and speaking on stage at Google, MozCon and Search Love.
Guest host and AB Tasty’s Head of Growth Marketing UK, John Hughes, spoke with Talia about emotional marketing as a tool for optimization, delving into how customer research can facilitate the experimentation process, reduce the rate of failure, and earn the buy-in from company stakeholders.
Here are some of the key takeaways from their conversation.
What is emotional marketing?
Based upon the idea that emotion drives every single decision that we make in life, the emotional targeting methodology shifts the focus of your online marketing content from your solution, features, or pricing, to your customer. Rather than playing a guessing game and simply reshuffling elements on a page, this technique requires a deeper understanding of human behavior. By identifying customer intent and buying motivation, you can create an optimized experience, which meets their needs and increases conversions.
Backed by academic research, the fundamental role of emotion in our daily choices can be integrated into your strategy to better cater to your customers by figuring out a) their biggest challenges and, b) how they want to feel after finding a solution. What is their desired outcome?
With this in mind, you can optimize your digital communications with high-converting copy and visuals that speak directly to your customers’ needs. By shifting the conversation from the product to the customer, an incredible opportunity opens up to scale and multiply conversions.
How do you build and measure an emotion-based experiment?
Firstly, experimentation should be backed by research. From customer and visitor surveys, to review mining, social listening and emotional competitor analysis, Talia encourages extensive research in order to create the most likely hypothesis upon which to base an A/B test.
Once you know more about your customers, you can review the copy and visuals on your product page for example, and from your research you might discover that your content is not relevant to your target customer. You can then come up with a hypothesis based on their actual needs and interests supported by compelling social proof, and write a brief for your designer or copywriter based on the new information.
From there you can build your experiment into your A/B testing platform with a selected North star metric, whether it’s check-outs, sign-ups or add-to-carts, to prove or disprove your hypothesis. And, while we know that nine out of 10 A/B tests fail, emotional marketing facilitates the hypothesizing process, strengthening the chance of creating a winning experiment by testing variables that can actually impact the customer journey.
How to persuade stakeholders to support your experiments.
When it comes to CRO, there are often too many chefs in the kitchen, especially in smaller organizations where founders have a concrete vision of their customers and their messaging.
Talia explains that a research-based approach to experimentation can offer reassurance as part of a slow-and-steady strategy, backed by evidence. This personalized methodology involves talking to your customers and website visitors and scouring the web for conversations about your specific industry, rather than simply following your competitor’s lead.
It becomes a lot easier to propose a test to a founder or CEO when your hypothesis is supported by data and research, however, Talia recommends resisting the urge to change everything at once and rather, start small. Test the emotional marketing in your ads or send out an email sequence requiring only a copywriter, and share the results.
When you’re trying to get buy-in, you need to have a strong hypothesis paired with good research to prove that it makes sense. If this is the case, you can demonstrate the power of emotional marketing by running a couple of A/B tests: one where the control is the current solution-focused content and the variant is a customer-focused alternative, and another which highlights how customers feel right now versus how they want to feel – two important variations which help you to relate better to your customer. The key to garnering support is to take baby steps and continuously share your research and results.
What else can you learn from our conversation with Talia Wolf?
Why B2B purchases are more emotional than B2C. (15:50)
How to stand out in a crowded market by knowing your customer. (20:00)
How emotional marketing impacts the entire customer journey. (25:50)
How to relate to your customer and improve conversions. (32:40)
About Talia Wolf
Conversion optimization specialist Talia Wolf is the founder and CEO of Getuplift – a company that leverages optimization strategies such as emotional targeting, persuasive design, and behavioral data to help businesses generate more revenue, leads, engagement and sales.
Starting her career in a social media agency, where she was introduced to the concept of CRO, Talia went on to become the Marketing Director at monday.com, before launching her first conversion optimization agency, Conversioner, in 2013.
Today, with her proven strategy in hand, Talia teaches companies all over the world to optimize their online presence using emotional techniques.
About 1,000 Experiments Club
The 1,000 Experiments Club is an AB Tasty-produced podcast hosted by Marylin Montoya, VP of Marketing at AB Tasty. Join Marylin and the Marketing team as they sit down with the most knowledgeable experts in the world of experimentation to uncover their insights on what it takes to build and run successful experimentation programs.
We’ve all been there: Mother’s Day is in a few days and you need to buy the perfect gift before it’s too late.
But there’s a major problem: you don’t know when you should place an order and who you should order from. You’re browsing a couple of websites and you see a gorgeous flower bouquet. You scroll down a bit and promptly read:
“Mother’s Day: Order now for on-time delivery.”
That’s it – you need to order now for the bouquet to be delivered before Mother’s Day.
That pressure you just felt? It’s called urgency.
Urgency and scarcity are widely used across marketing campaigns to increase engagement and boost conversions, because it works.
Take Black Friday for example: according to Adobe Digital Insights, that day alone racked up almost $9B dollars in sales in 2021.
Basically, urgent situations push us to act fast and scarcity triggers purchase anxiety, forcing us to act promptly. Put into the right hands, these tools can help e-commerce and online businesses boost their conversions and increase sales.
Before we look into the best practices, let’s take a quick look at the psychology behind scarcity and urgency.
Understand the psychology behind urgency
Urgency is a psychological trigger that is deeply rooted inside our brain: it relates to the human loss aversion or the so-called “fear of missing out” (FOMO).
Scientifically speaking, urgency is a time-based concept that prompts us to act quickly.
Similar to the scarcity principle, FOMO is a kind of social anxiety defined by wanting to stay connected with everyone around you and continually keep up with what they are doing.
When faced with a limited-time offer (e.g. a discount), we automatically start to evaluate if we’re comfortable letting this opportunity get away. In other words, the fear of missing out grows.
Understand the psychology behind scarcity
Similar to urgency, scarcity is a psychological trigger that uses quantity to compel us to act quickly. Scarcity triggers a thought that pushes us to place a higher value on objects that are scarce or rare.
Scarcity also triggers our FOMO instinct: if something was running out of stock, we’d also consider the pros and cons of buying it before it’s too late.
Now that we covered the psychological basis behind urgency and scarcity, here are the best practices to apply them in real-life marketing cases.
Scarcity and urgency best practices for marketers
Scarcity and urgency are undoubtedly powerful techniques to increase conversions.
However, they should be used with caution because pushy methods can rapidly become risky for your brand loyalty.
Avoid fake urgency and scarcity
Creating urgency is good, but abusing it is bad.
Some stores go all out and put everything on sale all year long, creating the feeling that everything is a bargain.
In the image below, you can see that the page gives the impression that every item is on sale. When everything is on sale, your customers realize that nothing really is and you’ll lose credibility.
Scarcity tactics don’t perform well when perceived as manipulative.
As a rule of thumb, only display genuine offers and don’t abuse them. Occasional sales are enough and generally more powerful.
Use the right vocabulary
As we’re exposed to sales and promotional offers all the time, sometimes it’s hard to distinguish fake sales from real bargains.
To avoid sounding too pushy, try not to use too many flashing banners—your visitors should be able to sense a real bargain at first glance.
Create powerful CTAs
Similar to the carefully chosen vocabulary, your call-to-action should state a real benefit and emphasize the urgency/scarcity.
For example, it’s a common practice to indicate the remaining stock in order to trigger the scarcity instinct.
You can see in the image below that Walmart is using this tactic by displaying “only 3 left!” below the price.
Personalize your messages
Crafting personalized messages is a major trend we see in digital marketing.
Whether in B2C or B2B, 1:1 personalization yields major benefits and overall better conversions.
Because it’s so efficient, adding hints of scarcity and urgency to your personalized messages could dramatically increase your sales.
Here are a few tips that you could use to implement scarcity-based personalized messages:
Additional personalized product suggestions
Dynamic text insertion
Email campaigns using marketing automation
Contextual Targeting
Want to get started on personalizing your content? AB Tasty is the complete platform for personalization and experimentation equipped with the tools you need to create a richer digital experience for your customers — fast. With embedded AI and automation, this platform can help you achieve omnichannel personalization and revolutionize your brand and product experiences.
5 Real-life examples of scarcity and urgency tactics used to increase conversions
Now that we’ve covered the best practices in scarcity marketing and urgency marketing tactics, let’s see some real-life examples.
Booking.com
Booking.com does an outstanding job of triggering a sense of urgency among its visitors. In the image below, you can see that they indicate how many times a given hotel was booked in a 12 or 24-hour period.
On top of that, they use messaging to enhance this sense of urgency such as: “Don’t Miss This” or “In High Demand!”
Using scarcity methods, Booking.com can boost internal competition in order to provide a superior service to its customers.
OnePlus
OnePlus is a smartphone company that became popular in a matter of months by playing solely on the scarcity tactic. They created a smartphone that you could only buy if you were invited.
It was impossible to buy this smartphone from any store and you could only order it directly from their website.
By creating a sense of exclusivity, OnePlus triggered a massive fear-of-missing-out effect that spread within the tech-savvy community.
Their daring marketing campaign was mostly based on the scarcity principle and led to a massive 1M unit sales and 25 million visits to their website.
Sushi Shop
In the food delivery industry, avoiding late deliveries is a tremendous challenge, considering that the average worker only dedicates half an hour for lunch breaks.
Marketers at SushiShop (a French leader in sushi delivery) wanted to test an urgency marketing tactic to see if it could yield any positive results.
Having this in mind, AB Tasty helped the brand introduce a stress marketing tactic based on the urgency principle.
In order to do so, we implemented a sticky banner at lunchtime on their mobile app to urge customers to pre-order. The idea was that they could pre-order to guarantee a satisfying delivery time and avoid late deliveries.
The results were very positive. They saw a 3% increase in cart order confirmations.
Amazon
As the largest e-commerce company in the world, Amazon is an obvious choice when it comes to scarcity and urgency examples.
On top of their nearly perfect product pages and listing pages, Amazon also has a “Today’s Deals” section where limited offers are displayed.
Their product listing cleverly displays your savings in order to highlight the price difference.
Furthermore, some products come in a limited quantity: Amazon uses this scarcity method to display the remaining stock.
In this case, 33% have already been claimed.
Using this strategy, Amazon manages to create a real sense of scarcity and urgency while not being too pushy in the process.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a famous communication and project management software known for making teams’ lives easier.
Besides its fancy visual identity, this company uses clever urgency tactics to make you feel like you’re missing out on something if you don’t use Basecamp.
By quoting real numbers from clients’ statistics, Basecamp clearly illustrates the benefits of using their product.
They even mention how many businesses have signed up in the last week.
On its “Real Results” page, Basecamp displays a huge number of customer reviews. Seeing all of these reviews could make you feel like the whole planet is using it, and that’s exactly what they want: The end goal is to trigger your FOMO.
Benefits of scarcity and urgency marketing tactics
In the hypercompetitive marketplace today, brands need to focus on winning customer attention in order to increase conversions.
Scarcity and urgency marketing are two very important approaches that can help increase the conversions that you’re after, gather new leads and close more deals. Just remember to apply urgency and scarcity responsibly – you don’t want your visitors to lose trust in your company.
These tactics can help you avoid the overuse of pushy advertisements on your website but still add light pressure on visitors to complete their purchases.
Encourage your visitors by using some of the urgency or scarcity tactics highlighted in the article above to see your conversion rate skyrocket.
You may not be aware of this, but it’s likely that you’ve come across the serial position effect on more than one occasion.
A concept coined by renowned psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus, the serial position effect refers to how the location of an item in a sequence influences a person’s memory or recall.
The concept dictates that people usually remember items at the beginning or the end of a list or sequence with greater accuracy than those in the middle.
User experience (UX) designers leverage the serial position effect to improve their designs and create a richer, more seamless experience for consumers. This approach to digital design is present in the websites, apps or landing pages of iconic brands such as Apple, Nike or Electronic Arts (EA).
Here we’re going to explore the serial position effect in more detail, explore some notable design examples, and consider how you can use this powerful principle to improve your brand’s UX offerings.
What is the serial position effect?
When it comes to UX optimization, the order of things matter. As humans, we do indeed tend to remember the items near the start or end of a list — much like our brains respond well to storytelling.
Hermann Ebbinghaus coined the phrase based on in-depth studies on the short as well as long term memory and its impact on how we remember or perceive information. These studies were further developed by psychologists B.Murdock in 1962 and Glanzer & Cunitz in 1966.
These extensive studies resulted in the two vital serial position effect concepts: the primacy effect and the recency effect.
Primacy effect
The primacy effect is based on the discovery that an individual is likely to recall items, assets or information from the start of a list.
For instance, when someone attempts to remember something from a long list of words, they are likely to recall the terms words listed at the beginning, rather the middle.
As such, the primacy effect helps a user to remember the information they absorb first better than the information they see later on in their journey (further down a landing page, for example).
Recency effect
Essentially, the recency effect is a concept contrary to the primary effect. Rather than recalling information absorbed earlier on, the recency effect is based on the notion of people remembering the information they see last with more clarity. This model is dependent on short-term memory.
A mix of studies suggests that the recency effect is prevalent in thecourtroom. In many cases, jurors are more likely to recall, and agree with, the argument or conclusion they hear last.
In a UX design context, for instance, a potential customer will recall the last two items they saw on a personalized product recommendation carousel and purchase one of these products as a result.
The primacy and recency effect combined make up key elements of the serial position effect, which brings us onto our next point.
Applying the serial position effect to design
Now that you understand the fundamental concepts of the serial position effect, we’re going to consider how you can apply it to design — or more specifically, to user design interfaces.
Both the primacy and recency effect can have a significant impact on the design of user interfaces. Extensive lists of information put a strain on the human memory, often hindering perception and recall; and, by utilizing both ends of the serial position effect spectrum (primacy and recency), you can enhance your designs significantly.
By understanding that items or assets in the middle of a sequence are usually absorbed the least, it’s possible to leverage the serial position effect to minimize the loss of information. In doing so, it’s possible to create interface designs that are richer, more valuable, and easier to navigate.
Considering that 38% of consumers will bounce off a web page if its layout is poor or unattractive, getting your design right will prove critical to your long term success.
Applying the serial position effect to your interface design process is at its core, down to ensuring that users can navigate the items or information on your page intuitively.
If your design is digestible, fluid, and seamless, users will recall vital information with more clarity while taking desired actions like signing up to a newsletter or buying a specific product.
Here are four essential principles of applying the serial position effect to interface design:
1. Provide practical, task-relevant information
Adding and maintaining task-relevant information to your interface will not only make your design more engaging, but it will reduce the strain on users’ focus or recall.
Publishing platform Medium, for instance, has designed its user interface to simplify its interactions from a reader’s as well as a writer’s perspective.
With a host of visual tools tailored to the users’ preferred topics or interests, you gain a visual snapshot of information that offers access to relevant content and to your reading list, and allows you to create a new piece of content with swift, seamless actions.
2. Add recognizable cues
Adding dynamic cues to your user interface design minimizes cognitive strain while facilitating informational recall.
Audible notifications (e.g. pings when you receive a message) or textual cues (e.g. small informational pop-up boxes) create a real sense of recognition. Video games like ‘Need For Speed’ or ‘Broken Sword’ are excellent examples of cue-based design for user interfaces.
EA Games’ once popular ‘Plants vs Zombies’ game, for instance, utilizes a multitude of recognizable visual and audio cues to help players navigate their way through the game and remain ‘in the moment’ without pushing them to their cognitive limits.
Foley-style sounds unique to each move the player makes (planting sounds, digging sounds etc.), text-based captions that tell the player what to expect next, and visual icons at the top of the screen all work cohesively to make the user experience feel as natural as possible. You can apply similar cues to e-commerce sites to enrich your designs and make them more intuitive.
3. Reduce the level of recall required
The human attention span has its limits and, typically, can only retain five pieces of information at any one time.
If you prioritize limiting the necessity for recall, you will guide users through their journey in a way that helps them remember relevant information as and when required.
Technology colossus Apple utilizes a visual grid system with informational titles and scannable dropdown boxes to help its customers comprare models with ease and pick a product that suits their specific needs. At any one point in the interface journey, users are only presented with the information they need — details including essential specs, main comparisons, and price.
This simple yet effective design prioritizes the most valuable information, minimizing the need for recall in the process.
4. Emphasize essential information at the start and end
Playing directly into the hands of the primacy and recency effect, highlighting or placing the most essential information at the start and the end (or the top and bottom) of your interface, placing the less important items in the center.
World-renowned e-commerce leader Amazon, for example, displays digestible personalized prompts, commands, and information at the top of its homepage.
In the center of the page, you gain access to trending products and deals. At the bottom of the page, or interface, you’re presented with personalized suggestions based on your shopping history or browsing behavior:
This design technique maximizes the potential for users to recall the information that offers the most value or is likely to prompt further engagement. An effective approach that enriches the user experience while increasing the chances of regular consumer conversions.
“Design used to be the seasoning you’d sprinkle on for taste; now it’s the flour you need at the start of the recipe.”
— John Maeda, design & UX expert
Serial position effect for landing page UX
From the user interface design methods we’ve explored, it’s clear that the order, as well as the way you present information, have a significant impact on how people interact with your brand or business.
In today’s hyper-connected digital age, your UX offerings count more than ever. 88% of users are unlikely to return to a website or landing page after a poor user experience.
To enhance your landing page UX and create an experience that will increase engagement while encouraging customer loyalty, you should consider implementing the serial position effect.
To reiterate the impact the serial position effect can have on landing page UX, here’s a visualization of the serial position curve.
From a digital marketing perspective, the serial position curve clearly demonstrates that people recall information towards the start and end of an informational sequence, with items or messaging in the middle of a landing page absorbed least. It’s a steady consistent curve that can offer a practical framework for your landing pages’ UX designs.
Russian e-commerce brand, Marc Cony, uses the serial effect methodology to increase new user engagement through its primary landing page.
Marc Cony homepage highlighting discount information(Source)
Here, you can see that the landing page design is clean and minimal to simplify user navigation while highlighting its most engagement-driving messaging as soon as you visit.
As you navigate your way down the landing page, there is a clear hierarchy of information. Scroll down and you’re presented with the opportunity to personalize your shopping experience, before viewing content surrounding the brand’s blog and social media pages.
Finally, there is a clean, concise call to action (CTA) button that prompts you to sign up to the brand’s newsletter and ‘convert.’ This is an excellent example of how using serial effect principles can create a seamless user experience while guiding consumers towards a desired action — in this case, viewing sale items or becoming an email subscriber.
Online retail innovator, Thread, offers an interactive and visually-rich approach to reduce consumer recall and optimize its landing page for increased brand engagement.
Thread’s clean, grid-based design is easy to scan and it’s above the fold messaging prompts the user to take action without having to second-guess themselves.
Thread homepage visually-rich approach
This interactive approach offers personal value while offering an incentive to interact. Clicking on preferred styles requires minimal recall and, as such, keeps the information at the top of the page fresh in the mind of the consumer.
Thread website, subheadings navigation
Once you’ve selected your preferred styles, you’re directed to a new landing page. Clear subheadings help you navigate your way through the page with minimal cognitive strain, and once you reach the bottom, the ‘Next’ CTA tells you what to do.
This approach to the serial position effect helps to streamline the user experience while keeping consumers engaged in the brand at all times.
A well-crafted informational hierarchy and interactive visual approach is a testament to the power of presenting information effectively without overwhelming the user with unnecessary data. This is definitely a driving force behind the startup’s ongoing success!
Whether you’re selling goods or services, applying the serial position effect will help you improve your landing pages’ UX and increase your conversion rates.
The Digital Marketing Institute, primacy and recency effect on Homepage (Source)
Digital marketing course provider, the Digital Marketing Institute, utilizes both the primacy and recency effect to UX optimize many of its landing pages.
The DMI’s homepage, for example, includes a clearly labelled ‘Download Brochure’ button at the very top of the page. The main banner tells the user exactly what the brand does and how they will benefit from enrolling (using a second ‘Download Button’ to prompt action), thus leveraging the primacy effect to encourage conversions.
At the bottom of the landing page, the Digital Marketing Institute includes graphics showcasing its top-level clients to create a sense of brand authority that sticks in the consumers’ mind while providing clear, concise FAQs in a clean dropdown format.
This recency effect-style approach ensures that visitors can recall essential details about the courses the DMI provides while remembering the impressive clients that brand has served.
Applying the serial position effect to your landing pages will give your UX design and content concepts definitive direction, improving navigation and boosting engagement in the process.
To build on the examples we’ve explored, here are some additional tips based on the serial position effect to help you improve your landing page UX:
Place your most expensive items or services at the top of your landing page to make your mid-range items or services appear less expensive and increase your average order value (AOV).
Add an alluring image, strapline, and CTA button to your top of page banner to deliver important information in a way that minimizes cognitive strain and increases consumer conversions.
Break up the text in the middle of the page with subheadings, images, bolded or italicized font, bullet points and small chunks of text to make your UX design more navigable. Doing so will also increase your chances of leading consumers to important information further down the page.
Position valuable information and USPs towards the bottom of the page and use informational CTA buttons to tell the user what to do next.
Always ensure that your landing page design is clean, logical, and easy to navigate. If you don’t put functionality first, it’s likely that your UX offerings will be poor and your visitors will not retain any information.
How to use experimentation in design
Applying effective design and copywriting principles to your various digital touchpoints while leveraging the serial position effect to deliver valuable information to your consumers will accelerate your commercial success.
But, in an increasingly saturated digital age where the consumer has a wealth of their fingertips, how do you know if your design and serial position effect-based efforts are working as they should?
A range of factors including color, layout, design elements, and even a consumer’s cognitive bias can impact landing page browsing behavior. So, the best way to understand if your initiatives are working and experiment with design effectively is though A/B testing. With a combination of effective data and the right A/B testing platform, it’s possible to pinpoint a specific landing page or user interface’s strengths or weaknesses.
By developing two versions of the same landing page, you can drill down into specific page elements and discover which performs best.
For example, you might find that version ‘A’ of a landing page is earning more engagement above the fold due to the design or placement of a ‘Shop Now’ button. Through testing, you might also find that version ‘B’ is converting more email subscribers as a result of a particular piece of copy or messaging.
If you hone in on this wealth of comparative information, you will gain the power to experiment with every design element imaginable, taking the best-performing elements to create a fully-optimized version of a specific page or touchpoint.
A/B testing will give your design experimentation activities shape while protecting your marketing budget.
If you understand which messaging or design elements to focus on, you can get to the root of the issue and make tweaks for optimizations that are likely to offer the best possible return on investment (ROI).
Concerning the serial position effect, through A/B testing and experimentation you will be able to flatten the serial position curve to balance the information on your interfaces or landing pages.
By balancing the information elements on your interfaces or landing pages, you can make your UX designs easier to navigate while improving brand engagement. You will also gain the ability to experiment with design elements to emphasize the information or assets featured at the top or bottom of your digital touchpoints.
Essentially, if users aren’t engaging with the information at the top or bottom of a specific page, it will become clear that your serial position effect-centric efforts aren’t working. From there, you can experiment with the hierarchy of your information in addition to design elements including buttons, color combinations, imagery, copy formatting, and text boxes.
At this point, it’s worth noting that in our ever-evolving commercial landscape, experimentation never stops. What works today may not tomorrow — and to optimize your digital touchpoints for sustainable growth, constant testing and evolution is essential.
“Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future.” — Robert L. Peters, Graphic Designer
Final thoughts
We’ve outlined the fundamentals of the serial position effect and looked at how to apply the concept to UX and landing page design while outlining the importance of experimentation and testing.
Reflecting on our journey, what is crystal clear is that, in order to deliver the very best designs and UX offerings to your consumers, you need to reduce cognitive strain as much as possible.
The serial position effect helps us to understand human limitations in terms of both long term and short term memory, as well as the importance of ordering your information effectively.
As designers, when applying the serial position effect, it’s critical to empower the user by providing task-relevant information on the screen where possible, sharing concise prompts or cues, reducing the level of recall needed across the user journey, and highlighting the most valuable information at the start and end of a sequence where necessary.
When interacting with your digital touchpoints or interfaces, your users shouldn’t be overwhelmed with information. They should be able to navigate every aspect of your interfaces or landing pages intuitively, with little additional thought, while understanding what to do next and why they are doing it.
Your UX and design offerings should deliver relevant, valuable information to your users in a way that is completely seamless — and, by using the serial position effect to guide your decision, you will set yourself apart from the competition.
Neuromarketing is a very science-oriented aspect of marketing. It aims to investigate why people respond to and remember certain products or elements of an advert, compared to others. Applying neuroscience – i.e. the assessment of how our brain responds to stimuli, such as TV adverts and posters – avoids any vague or bias feedback from consumers, as no-one can control how they immediately respond to things. The response is tracked using two methods; either an MRI or functional magnetic resonance imaging, and electroencephalography, which is also known as EEG. Both of these methods track and measure the impulses and activity in the brain that are both subconscious and conscious, as we are only in control our conscious reaction and feelings. As you can imagine, both options come with a hefty price tag, but companies often justify the high costs if it means securing more sales!
So, how is it used in marketing?
Well, the process of neuromarketing is basically put in place by brands to get a much better and more in-depth understanding of just how powerful their message or product is, by studying the reaction it causes in consumers. Brands can also get a far better understanding of the potential market available to them, by looking at the influential factors and then designing their packaging or product accordingly. In fact, there’s every chance your favorite brand has done just that when it comes to creating the ideal product that appeals to you!
We explore five examples of neuromarketing research conducted and what the findings have meant for the world of marketing in 2019.
#1 – Chips Ahoy and Their Boring Biscuits
America’s favorite cookie company decided to conduct some neuromarketing research when it came to creating the perfect packet to sell their cookies. Nabisco, the owners of Chips Ahoy, decided to test their old packaging and found people were actually having a negative response when looking at it. Consumers said it was too difficult to read the wording due to the colors used and the picture of the cookie made them feel bored or neutral towards the brand. So the makers behind Chips Ahoy took to the drawing board for their next draft and re-designed the package to include a resealable tub, better wording and colors. The most obvious change was the cookie image was more engaging and fun!
Key takeaway: Nabisco used the eye-tracking element from electroencephalography, or EEG, to identify how customers were reacting visually to their packaging. This kind of research is really popular among other food brands, which use it to design crisps, confectionery and other cookie packaging. In fact, chances are, your favorite brands have carefully chosen the packaging you’re so familiar with and that may be why you buy them!
#2 – A Sticky Situation With Jam and Decision-Making
Do you feel suddenly overwhelmed and incapable of making decisions when it comes to browsing a wide selection in a shop? Well, you’re not alone, as a study conducted by Sheena Iyengar, a professor of business at Columbia University, discovered. The author, Professor Iyengar, and her researchers chose to use Wilkin & Son’s jam jars at a sampling booth and regularly mixed the selection of jams available, between 24 jars to just six. Whilst 60% were drawn to the sampling booth when 24 different jars were available, compared to just 40% when there were just 6 to choose from, nearly all customers sampled just two flavors. Here’s the interesting bit; whilst 40% of people came to try the smaller selection of jams, 30% then decided to buy some, compared to just 3% of people who bought when there were 24 flavors to choose from!
#3 – Why Counting Cans Mattered for Campbell’s Soup
Here we have another example of decision-making under pressure, but this time due to a seemingly limited supply of soup! A study by Wansink, Kent, and Hoch, was conducted to understand the concept of ‘anchoring’ in marketing; the process of comparing products or services against similar products to create a sense of superiority or importance. Using the well-known soup brand Campbell’s, Wansink et al created one display of cans with a price of $0.79 and a sign that said ‘No Limit’, and another that said ‘Limit of 12 per person’. The result showed that shoppers who had no limit only bought an average of 3 cans, whereas the shoppers who saw the limited shelf ended up buying 7! The results support the ‘anchoring’ concept within marketing, where the brain fixates or ‘anchors’ on the key message, in this case, the fact that the soup is limited to 12, making consumers think ‘I can only have 12 – it must be good!’.
Key takeaway: This approach is definitely still alive and present in modern-day marketing tactics, with so many brands using the ‘comparison’ approach to create a feeling of limited availability when it comes to a product or service, creating a simulated sense of urgency and making consumers think it must be a great product or service because it’s really popular!
#4 – PayPal And Speed – The Modern Way to Handle Money
Another fan of using EEG, or electroencephalography, to understand how consumers respond visually to their brand, is money transfer site, PayPal. PayPal has spent a lot of time researching how best to position their product online, and in particular what will make their consumers’ experience with them easy. Users of their services online will be familiar with their quick, convenient money transfer system and the reason behind this slick service is PayPal have discovered e-shoppers expect an almost-instant payment service that is convenient to use. Whilst PayPal thought their ‘high security’ approach was appealing to online customers, it turned out their one-click payment model was the real attraction!
Key takeaway: This example shows just how effective neuromarketing can be to refocus a large brand like PayPal, on what really matters for their customers; convenience when buying online. Changing the business focus can be a real challenge for large corporations and PayPal is a shining example of how using marketing as a science can help them understand their audiences far better than feedback forms and reviews.
#5 – Even Search Engines Lean On Science
A slightly more surprising use of neuromarketing in modern marketing is that of Yahoo and their use of EEG to encourage more people in the US to use their search engine instead of their competitors’. Yahoo created a 60 second TV commercial that featured people around the world celebrating an ambiguous occasion, dancing and generally looking very happy. They played it to a selection of people who agreed to wear EEG caps so their brainwave activity could be measured. The study proved Yahoo’s theory of evoking positive emotions and even stimulating the memory part of the brain, indicating to their researchers that the ad would be highly memorable to anyone who then watched the advert, therefore making Yahoo top of mind, encouraging people to use their search engine next time they were browsing online. And it worked! The advert became their best performing piece of marketing to date.
Key takeaway: Yahoo recognized they had a huge obstacle to overcome when it came to being top of mind compared to other search engine giants, so they decided to create something that would make them hard to forget – and using neuromarketing science, it worked! The key to success for this campaign was to make the viewer feel positively towards it, prompting them to think of Yahoo in a positive light, as well as making them a more memorable brand.
Imagine you’re at a vintage store. After a minute of window shopping, you’re drawn to a fancy silk shirt. You check its price tag, and since you see it’s quite expensive – $150 – you put it back on the rack. However, determined to find something similar and cheaper, you continue with your search, only to find that other shirt prices range between $500-850. What do you do next? You go back to your first find and buy it. Know why? Because of a cognitive bias called anchoring.
Anchoring is the fact that people tend to cling on to the first piece of information (or anchor) they encounter, and let their subsequent actions, such as estimates, arguments, and conclusions, be made in relation to it. Think of it as a shortcut or heuristic our brain takes to speed up the decision-making process.
In the above example, the leading anchor was the $150 price tag, which helped you make a price comparison and conclude that the $150 shirt’s a steal!
Origin of Anchoring Bias
Back in 1974, Kahneman and Tversky conducted a study in which one group of high school students was asked to estimate the result of 1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8, and the other group was asked to calculate 8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1. They had only five seconds to answer.
Now, although the answer to both questions is 40,320, the groups gave different answers. The first group’s median estimate was 512, while the second group’s median estimate was 2,250. What’s the reason behind this big a difference?
Basically, faced with a time limit, participants quickly anchored to the product of the first few numbers of the mathematical expression (1x2x3=6 & 8x7x6=336), which then influenced their estimates: a smaller number for an ascending sequence and a bigger answer for a descending sequence. Ultimately, this experiment proved Kahneman and Tversky’s prediction that people rely on the initial cue to make estimates, even though it may result in an error in judgment.
Examples of Anchoring Bias in Action
Let’s look at how some brands use the Anchoring Bias to appear affordable and increase the perceived value of their products and services.
#1: Display Original and Discounted Prices Next to Each Other
We often rely on the price of a product to determine its worth. Expensive products, for instance, are assumed to be excellent quality, stylish, long-lasting, and hence worth buying. And this is exactly the reason why we’re tempted to buy them for much less on sale.
Here’s an example from the Columbia website where the original price is struck off, anchoring users to consider the discounted price as a good bargain.
The offer becomes more persuasive with social proof used as a secondary anchor. Source
Note: The Anchoring Effect can backfire if there’s a ridiculous gap between the original and discounted price. For example, wouldn’t you be suspicious if I propose selling you a brand new BMW whose actual price is $45,000, for $8,000?
#2: Offer a Suggestion
Ever noticed transparent donation boxes for various charities at checkout counters in stores and eating joints? How do you decide how much to give? My guess is you’ll look at the most popular bills in the box. After all, with people from behind the counter looking at you, you want to make sure you come across as a person with a big heart and an equally big wallet!
But unlike in the example above, it’s a good idea to take cognitive load off a customer’s mind. Notice how the folks at The Guardian manage that. The default contribution value works as an anchor, hinting it’s a popular option, thus making people conform to it. Whether people donate the recommended amount or not is a different matter, but, at least they have a number to adjust to.
Agreed it’s not quite the trend, but this Conversion XL study might convince you to change your tactics. Not only did they find out that ordering pricing plans from high to low results in higher revenue, but another of their studies revealed how highlighting a recommended plan results in even greater results.
MailChimp does both. Straight off the bat people anchor to the expensive plan, which makes other options more appealing in comparison.
Another reason this strategy works is the operative rejection-then-retreat technique. Robert Cialdini talks at length about it in his book, Influence. Essentially, you make a larger-then-smaller request so that even if someone rejects it at first, guided by the reciprocity principle, they’ll give in to the next request.
To prove it works, he cites a report wherein billiard table dealers were able to increase the average table sales by 50% by first showing the expensive models and then allowing customers to shop the rest of the collection. Suffice it to say that by organizing your plans from high to low, your prospects are bound to see the mid-price options more favorably.
It’s a pricing technique where you offer a lower price per unit if someone buys a product in bulk. For example, a set of three mason jars for $5 instead of $2 for each.
The main purpose is to get people to anchor on the money-saving aspect. It makes the offer tempting and convinces them to buy more units even when they don’t actually need them. Supermarket giants have been capitalizing on this for years. An example from the E.Leclerc website below:
Buying in bulk is money-saving, something people don’t say no to.
Other Cognitive Biases Used In Conversion Rate Optimization
Bandwagon Effect
People’s tendency to do something merely because others are doing it, irrespective of whether they agree or not, is what psychologists called the Bandwagon Effect.
One of the best ways you can harness its conversion optimization benefit is by using social proof on your website. Display how many businesses you cater to, your client names, ratings, reviews, and testimonials to establish credibility and influence prospects to ‘hop onto the bandwagon’. Take a cue from the company Box on how to drop numbers and names.
It’s a psychological phenomenon whereby people accept vague and generic statements as accurate descriptions of their own personalities, without thinking they could be applicable to other people, too.
At AB Tasty, we ran a campaign for one of our clients, Sephora, that involved running a personalized, promotional banner exclusively for loyalty card holders. And guess what? The banner led to a 16% increase in transaction.
The Framing Effect is a cognitive bias where people make decisions based on how information is presented to them as either a gain or a loss.
Generally speaking, people avoid risk when the option is positively framed, but become more risk-averse when a negative frame is brought into the picture. Why? Since the pain of losing something is felt much more than the happiness upon gaining something.
To capitalize on this psychological quirk, use urgency to frame the experience for your visitors. You can shine the spotlight on real-time stock levels, the time ticker, or competition. The intention is for visitors to notice the inevitable loss and avoid it, come what may!
Peak-End Rule Effect is a convenient cognitive shortcut our brain takes to recall an experience as good or bad based on how we feel at the peak (when emotions are intense) and at the end of the event.
From a CRO point of view, this means the focus should be on creating a user journey that concludes on a high note. For instance, at the checkout stage, don’t force registration, rather give visitors the guest checkout option, to lessen any potential for frustration.
It’s an excellent psychological tactic to boost your product’s perceived value and influence buyers’ decision-making journey. But first, you’ll need to create anchors that spark a favorable response from your consumers. You may not perfect it in one go, which is why it’s recommended you never stop A/B testing.
Buyer personas matter. Who can contest that? They bring you tête-à-tête with consumers. You get to know who they are and their preferences, resulting in marketing more efficiently to them. Simply put, you get bang for your buck! A Demand Gen report states that having buyer personas in place contributed to a 175% increase in Thomson Reuters’ revenue, a 10% increase in leads sent to sales, and a 72% reduction in lead conversion time. Incredible, you’d agree!
Want to ape their success? Start by making your customers feel you’re addressing them and them alone. For that to happen though, you’ll need more than demographic data. Simply put, you’ll need to start recording your customer’s psychographics.
What is Psychographics?
It’s the study of a consumer’s not-so-visible characteristics, such as their interests, activities, opinions, lifestyle, and attitude.
Qualitative data is highly valuable. You discover the real motivation behind why people love, as well as advocate for, a few brands. Keeping that in mind, you can alter your messaging to bridge the gap between you and them. You’ll forge a much deeper connection and hear your audience say: “This brand totally gets me!”
Why does this happen though? Because you treat them as individuals with a distinct personality, not as a number. By focusing on their inner drives, their problems and what will actually help them, you become relevant, increasing chances of conversion.
The Key Difference Between Psychographics and Demographics
Unlike psychographics, that concerns itself with the ‘why’ and ‘personal’ aspect of customers, demographics is about ‘who’ this person is, with a focus on quantifiable details like age, gender, ethnicity, employment status, marital status, income, etc.
Both are equally important to refine buyer personas, and when coupled with behavioral stats, can result in a better understanding of your audience.
With a bit of ground covered, let’s shift focus to what psychographics deals with.
Types of Psychographics to Keep Your Eye On
Going back to the definition, psychographic profiling is done on what is known as the IAO variables, namely interests, activities, and opinions.
Interests
Interests center on a person’s curiosity about something and what they care about. For example, wildlife, theater, economics, climate change, etc. So target people based on what intrigues and fascinates them. They’ll respond much better to your calls-to-action.
Activities
This includes everything that people busy themselves with, such as gardening, hiking, bird watching, or reading, among a gazillion other things. With that knowledge, you can write content and use vocabulary that resonates with them.
Opinions
People form opinions as a result of their interaction with people around them, their socioeconomic status, personal experiences, etc. Clearly, you’ll need to keep their perspective in mind to influence them in your favor.
How Do You Gather Psychographic Data?
You go where you can find it!
Google Analytics
Click on Audience > Interests. Depending on variables already set as ‘secondary dimensions,’ you will know more about your audience. If not, click ‘add segment’ and track them.
Surveys and Questionnaires
Asking questions makes you stand out; you come across as a brand that’s concerned about its customers. What’s more, you get suggestions from people who’ve experienced your services/products. Who knows, you might come across common denominators you had no idea existed before. For example, if 10% of your customers follow a certain influencer, you can collaborate with them.
Personal Interviews
Have a conversation with your favorite client and in an effort to ‘get-to-know-them-even-better’, ask questions that’ll help you collect psychographic data. Not possible? Speak to people (from your social circle) who are somewhat ‘similar’ to your target audience.
Social Media Analytics
Head to the audience insights section to discover a wealth of information that people share. From their life events, hobbies, political opinions to interests and pages they like/follow, there’s a lot that can make a world of a difference in your next marketing campaign.
Additionally, social media listening can tell you how your competitors’ followers feel about them, which you can use to your advantage to differentiate yourself.
Why talk to these teams? For the simple reason that they interact with your customers on an everyday basis. That alone makes them a perfect data source to help you get to know your prospects much better. Dig out the FAQs, the key phrases and words that customers use in reference to your brand or industry. This could be pretty useful in brainstorming ideas for your sales page, for example. Make their words yours.
How to Use Psychographics in Digital Marketing
#1: On Your Website
David Ogilvy famously said: ‘What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.’ You’ll agree it makes a huge difference in how your audience perceives you. So to hit the nail on the head with your copy, you need to take the words right out of your customers’ mouths!
Joanna Wiebe of Copyhackers dug up reviews of six best-selling rehab and alcohol recovery books while researching how to write website copy for a rehab center. She picked phrases that gave her a peek into the minds of a recovering/recovered addict. This helped her understand their trajectory of thoughts, wants, and pains.
She then went on to use one direct quote from a reviewer as the headline. The payoff? 400% more CTA clicks and 20% more lead form submissions. Talk about the power of psychographics! Related: 10 Techniques To Build Lead Capture Forms.
The purpose of a sales page is to convince people to take the offer on the table. But it won’t happen unless you know the actual problems your audience is facing.
Check out the sales copy by the Girl Gone Strong team. They use their target customer’s psychographics to create perfect sales copy. You’ll notice they’ve used the PAS framework. For those who don’t know, it stands for ‘Problem’, ‘Agitate’ and ‘Solution’ and here’s how it’s applied on their page:
Problem: Create a context with video on the first scroll.
Agitate: Go specific, highlighting ‘real’ problems: ‘seeing little to no results’, ‘restrictive dieting’, ‘body image issues’.
Solution: Overcome doubts with the guide created by women for women, backed by the recent finishers of the training program as well as fitness experts.
No matter the industry, you can implement the framework and make your audience’s challenges clear to them. Make them see the negative implication of being stuck in the rut before plugging your solution.
Today, 47% of buyers view 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep. Yes, it’s a zig-zag path, but one that leads inevitably to you. Meaning, if you want them to come knocking on your door, your content must center around their interests.
A perfect example is Neil Patel’s marketing blog. He understands his readers’ psychographics and addresses their burning points in the most simple, conversational and comprehensive manner possible. In fact, there’s content for people at all stages in the funnel, which makes him everyone’s go-to resource. His readers love him:
Satisfy user intent: Write a long blog post if that’s the pattern you noticed in top results. Indeed, BuzzSumo partnered with Noah Kagan of OKDork.com to analyze 100 million blog posts and found that ‘people are more likely to share longer articles’.
Optimize for UX:Prime your readers for an excellent experience on your blog. It begins with adjusting to the information-foraging audience and making your content skimmable. Nielsen’s research states that 79% of people scan web pages.
Additionally, read comments of your competitor’s top performing content. You’ll get a fair idea about what your audience thinks and worries the most about. Perhaps you will even get new content ideas that people are interested in!
With psychographic data by your side, you can design and write conversion-optimized landing page copy. You’ll no longer rely on guesswork – rather, you’ll be sure of who this person is, and you’ll impress them with your on-point message. If you really hit your mark, you’ll even strike an emotional cord.
Check out the landing page below by TransferWise. With psychographic segmentation in place, they promptly address their customers’ biggest pain point in the headline. Then there’s an interactive calculator for convenience, plus real-time exchange rates for people to track. They also add social proof for reassurance’s sake because this is monetary transaction we’re talking about, after all!
You’ve reached a point where you know psychographics works, so don’t let that data go to waste. Use it to write targeted, appealing ads. However, first, make sure you’re channeling your money and effort where your audience spends time. That way, you’ll be present at the right place and in front of the people who’ll actually ‘get’ and respond to your message.
Let’s say you’re an eco-friendly, sustainable fashion label. You know your audience demographics is females between the ages of 25 and 40 in the US. Now, throw psychographic variables into the mix and your target audience will look like this:
Demographic:
Female
Age between 25 and 40
Single/married
Household income $60k-$100k
Psychographic:
Interested in environmental issues and climate change
Striving for a zero-waste lifestyle
Shops from farmer’s markets
Follows environmental activists and influencers
Volunteers
See what a difference psychographic profiling makes? There’s no way this core audience won’t connect with you and help you achieve your ad (read: brand) goals!
#6: Email Marketing
Understanding the psychographics of your customers plays an important role in building an email list. That’s because the inbox is a sacred space and people won’t subscribe to you unless you promise to send them stuff that really interests them. Perhaps it’s time for you to become that brand people can’t wait to hear from, eh? Remember: The more people on your list, the more conversions you make.
If you already have an incredible list of subscribers, then the challenge is in continuing to stay relevant to them – otherwise, you’ll see many leave. Psychographics can lead the way, telling you your audience’s needs, fears and expectations. This, in turn, will prep you to create highly personalized emails. A report states that marketers who used segmented campaigns noted as much as a 760% increase in revenue.
So go back to your past campaigns to learn why the messaging resonated with your audience. Then – repeat it. It’s likely going to lift open rates and engagement. Also, keep up with current trends to boost your email CTRs. Interactive emails, for example, are quite engaging. So think along those lines.
HubSpot regularly sends interactive quizzes in their emails.
That’ll Be All For Now
Psychographics allows you to get into the head of your customers. And that alone makes it an important piece of data for marketers that want to create passionate brand subscribers. When used in combination with demographics, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities to stay relevant and interesting to your target audience and customers alike.
And while it’s true that mining psychographic insights is hard work, it’s the gains that make the whole process worth it. Once you have your hard-won data, apply it to your website, sales page, landing pages, ads and emails to create an in-sync omnichannel experience for your audience.
Over to you now. How else do you use psychographics?
Well, now you do. And what these statistics imply is that you can no longer push user experience design to the back burner. Rather, know who your target audience is and involve them in the design process. Ask them questions to understand their struggles and desires. Eventually, you’ll begin to notice patterns in their answers that you can then use to identify design solutions.
But it isn’t as easy or straightforward a process as it seems.
When you test your website with users, a cognitive bias called the Framing Effect can interfere. If you remember, we’d talked about it at length with respect to loss aversion. If not, give it a read. In the meantime, let’s go over its Wikipedia definition:
Framing Effect is where people decide on options based on if the options are presented with positive or negative semantics; e.g. as a loss or as a gain.
Put simply, people’s responses are influenced by the way a piece of information is presented to them. In your case, as a UX researcher and designer, it means that led by your own biases, you may frame questions that confirm your hypothesis instead of finding the objective truth. And that’s a major fail because if you don’t recognize it early on, you’ll end up with a website designed for yourself.
With that in mind, let’s figure out how you can you keep this bias in check.
Don’t Ask Leading/Manipulative Questions
…for the simple reason that they can prime users and influence their answers. They will say what you want to hear instead of giving you honest responses.
To understand this better, read the following questions out loud. Which of them, according to you, will provide more reliable feedback:
I saw that you were confused when navigating the website. What was the issue?
What was easy or difficult about navigating the website?
You were having difficulty navigating the website. Why so?
My guess is that you’re going to pick #2 because #1 and #3 are leading questions. They encourage a certain type of answer that can result in inaccurate feedback and bad decisions. Wondering how? Let’s break down all three questions.
I saw that you were confused when browsing the website. What was the issue?
The problem: First, the interviewer assumes the user was confused. What if they were not? But now that they’ve said it, the user may believe they were having trouble browsing the website. Second, they use the word issue, which seems to imply that there must be an issue. What if there was none?
What was easy or difficult about browsing the website?
This is a good question because there’s no pressure to answer a particular way. Left to their own devices, the user will stay true to their experience. In fact, the interviewer may even get surprising insights that enable them to see problems and solutions from a completely different point of view.
You were having difficulty browsing the website. Why so?
The problem: Like in the first question, here too, the interviewer assumes that the user was having troubles navigating. This leads them to believe that they were indeed browsing with great difficulty. The outcome? A biased and unhelpful response that may not necessarily truly reflect their actual experience and thought process.
But how do you get around to not writing leading questions?
You purge them out of your system and out on the paper. Forget about whether they serve your confirmation bias or not. #NoFilter
Leave them on the table for a day or two.
Next, edit and re-frame questions until they are neutral and don’t stick out like a sore thumb.
Run the list past your peers because two pairs of eyes are better than one.
Et voilà! You have successfully made it to the other side of the fence. That being said, you may still make mistakes because the Framing Effect isn’t easy to overcome. So let’s move on to know what more you can do to stop it from messing with your efforts.
Watch Your Words
When a user asks a question, Kara Pernice, Senior Vice President at Nielsen Norman Group recommends you try the Echo, Boomerang, or Columbo techniques. Here’s a summary of what she says in the article:
Echo
Repeat the last phrase or word the user said in a slight interrogatory tone. This will naturally put the user in the mindset of answering the question by elaborating on what he meant by those exact words. For example:
User: This table is weird, well, hmmm, not sure what, uh…
Facilitator: Not sure what? Or, Table is weird?
Boomerang
Bounce user’s questions and comments right back at them to make them solve the issue by imagining they aren’t in a research environment. For example:
User: Do I buy without creating an account?
Facilitator: What would you do if you were doing this on your own?
Colombo
Ask only a part of the question so that the user helps you by answering their question. It’s effective because fewer words mean that you’re less likely to influence their answer. For example:
User: If I close here will I lose my work?
Facilitator: Uhm, you are wondering if [pause] you might [pause.]
User: I am just not really sure if I should pick “close” or “cancel” or “ok.” I guess I don’t know the difference between these buttons.
Kara concludes the article by saying that these techniques aren’t a ‘license to interrupt the user any time he makes a sound’. Determine:
Whether the user was thinking out loud or if it really was a question that must be answered.
Whether the comment made was audible to you to get talking with them.
Whether there’s any real benefit from probing them, or you have enough information.
Bonus advice: Record usability sessions to analyze your non-verbal behavior because that can be leading, too. Check if you were you smiling and nodding to get a response, or were you poker-faced?
When all is said and done, let’s not completely discredit framing. It can be useful, especially when you want to elicit a user’s true behavior. Let me illustrate this with an example.
Imagine you want to know a user’s path on your website. Frame your question in a manner that introduces context and focus without being suggestive at all. How do you do that? Instead of saying, ‘You are here to buy a bookcase. Now find one, add it to your shopping cart and checkout’, you say:
‘You have 50 books lying stray in your house. Please look for a suitable product to stack them, add it to your cart and complete the checkout process.’
Doing this, you’ll have your hands on rich insights because neither did you instruct nor prime users to search for a bookcase. Had you done that, they would have straightaway used the search functionality on your website instead of acting on their own.
In short, framing allows you to establish boundaries. You become more focused to form research questions that support your research goals. Everything else gets excluded.
Moving on, let’s talk about how design decisions are vulnerable before the framing effect.
How the Framing Effect Affects Design Choices
The way test findings are framed can heavily influence how it’s interpreted. NN Group tested this and found out that decision frames do affect design choices.
About 1037 UX practitioners participated in a quiz and were randomly shown a version of a hypothetical study’s findings: Half of them saw the negative frame and the other half saw the positive frame. In the end, both groups were asked the same question: ‘Should the search function be redesigned?’ Practitioners that saw the findings expressed as a failure rate were 31% more likely to believe the design needed an overhaul.
Then, there were a few of them who said they weren’t sure or that the design needed no change at all. And, that’s quite interesting because whether a website needs to be redesigned depends on a range of factors, such as the type of website, the overall importance of the search function and implementation costs to the participants. Since none of this was mentioned in the quiz, it’s clear that these participants were more critical of their choice and didn’t want to make snap judgments.
Much like these practitioners, you, too, can make reason-backed decisions. Here’s how:
Critically analyze decision frames rather than jumping to conclusions. Refuse to pick one frame over another in case there isn’t enough data. Find out what’s amiss to support your argument.
Re-frame the findings and look at it from a success/failure or gain/loss perspective. You should then have a fair idea if you were being framed.
Connecting The Dots
We can all agree that the Framing Effect is like mercury that can slip through the tiniest crack. You can’t pull a trick from under your hat to banish this deep-seated bias, but you can definitely become more mindful of the trap.
Ask if the question is framed to yield a response you want, or will it motivate the user to be unbiased. What if you word the question differently? Will it change the answer? Point being, once you are more critical you will have more confidence in your choices that will reflect in your research practice as well as your website and products.
Remember, you can use this bias to work for you, especially to support research goals and help boost e-commerce conversions through loss aversion tactics.
The Halo Effect is our tendency to make an overall impression of a person based on a single trait. If X is good-looking, X is also a duty-bound citizen and will follow the law to the letter. Illogical, but that’s how it works.
Let’s go back in time and surprise ourselves a bit.
A 1974 study found that when it came to sentencing defendants in the court of law, jurors showed leniency towards physically attractive individuals over unattractive ones, even though they had committed exactly the same crime. Another study revealed that social workers found it hard to digest that a beautiful person can commit a crime.
Can you believe it? A more important question: Do people continue to take good looks this seriously?
Very much so. Even when there’s enough information available to make accurate judgments, our brain prefers taking shortcuts. The short cut, in this case, is a cognitive bias called the Halo Effect.
To an extent, the Halo Effect is a type of confirmation bias, since we judge people in a manner that confirms our first impression of them or what we already believe about them. We turn to it to fill the gaps in our understanding of a person, who we don’t know yet. In that sense, it can also backfire because if we don’t like them then it will lead to negative biases. X criticizes, X is arrogant.
Tracing Its Origins
It was Edward Thorndike who first introduced the term ‘Halo Effect’ in a 1920 paper, A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings. In his research, military commanding officers were asked to assess a series of traits, including intellect, leadership skills, personal qualities (intelligence, loyalty, responsibility, selflessness, and cooperation), and physical qualities (voice, neatness, physique, etc.) of their subordinate soldiers. The researchers found that high ratings of one quality correlated with high ratings of other traits, whereas negative ratings of one quality pulled down other trait scores.
Although this theory was proposed in reference to people, the metaphor extends to brands, website design, marketing strategies, and advertising.
In each case, it reiterates one fact: We are not always as objective as we believe we are. Even our most rational decisions are sometimes flawed and misguided.
We are not always as objective as we believe we are. Even our most rational decisions are sometimes flawed and misguided.
How to Create a Halo Effect
Marketers have actually been benefiting from creating a Halo Effect on their websites and brands for a long time. To get ahead of the game, the key is to know where the limit is – consumers aren’t blind to these efforts, and overdoing it can backfire.
Now, if you’re ready, here’s how to pull all the right strings to create a positive, first impression.
Put Attractiveness to Good Use
When someone good-looking becomes the face of your brand, the perceived value of your product increases. It’s called the attractiveness halo effect. And marketers dig this strategy because it pays off. What really transpires? Scientists claim that, when seeing an attractive man or a woman in an advertisement, people bypass their rational faculty and buy on impulse. They assume ‘what is beautiful is good’ and transfer the model’s attractiveness (easily observed characteristic) to the product. Though, what’s interesting is that this phenomenon is mostly restricted to products related to beauty.
Gucci Bloom campaign
Now if you’re a beauty brand, it’s worth noting that some researchers have recorded negative responses (pg.22) toward attractive models, especially among female consumers. This, in turn, had a negative impact on the ad’s effectiveness. One likely explanation is social comparison with models. That said, even men’s self-esteem takes a blow seeing stereotypical male models.
Other studies demonstrate positive consumer responses to less stereotypical depictions, like the Dove “Real Women” campaign. This has encouraged many brands to feature real, un-photoshopped photos of models to keep it as real as possible. Needless to say, the Halo Effect in such cases is phenomenal!
Bottom line: Use attractive models if they are relevant to the products and services you offer.
Findings published by ConversionXL Institute confirm: People look at design-related elements to determine whether they should trust a website or not.
See for yourself. Of the two screenshots below, which website do you think you trust more?
The second one, because it looks better design-wise? Correct. It’s less cluttered and more purpose-driven.
This brings us to the next point: Creating an eye-candy of a website is a job half-done. Unless it is easy for users to find what they are looking and carry out necessary functions, they won’t care to stop by later.
The question to now ask is: What do you do?
You identify user experience issues because even one bad experience can hurt your company’s reputation and no amount of cosmetic changes can fix that. Marks & Spencer tried and failed. Their redesigned website had several usability and performance issues, which caused an 8.1% of drop in sales.
Bottom line: Aesthetic web design and usability go hand-in-hand.
Borrow Celebrity Influence
Signing-up celebrities to endorse you is the fastest way to amplify trustworthiness of your brand. How does it work? Well, fans admire their favorite celeb and by extension, they trust the brands they represent.
Tommy Hilfiger x Gigi Hadid Spring 2018 RTW Collection
That said, getting a celeb onboard is a complicated process. There are a few things to take care of:
They shouldn’t endorse multiple or your competitor’s products. It dilutes your ad’s recall value.
But even when all the necessary safety precautions are taken, companies face backlash when a celeb goofs up. This can, of course, never be predicted, which is why it’s always better to monitor what the celebrity has been up to.
Nike severed its ties with cyclist Lance Armstrong when he was found guilty of using illicit drugs
Bottom line: Celebs are a means to an end; use their popularity such that they don’t overshadow your brand.
Create A Solid Brand Equity
Moving on from your website to your brand.
Your brand equity or value hinges on your customer’s perception of + preference and experience with your brand. If you want them to think highly of your brand, focus on the quality and innovation of your products and services. In the end, both must exceed their expectations.
Once you become a household name, your products will start selling owing to the Halo Effect. This happens since people positively associate with the rest of your product line-up. A classic example is when in 2003, Nike used its brand recognition to enter a competitive golf equipment market.
The opposite is also true: One negative experience and your sales figures will plummet. Back in 2017, for example, Samsung’s brand equity declined when Galaxy Note 7 was recalled. Surprisingly, though, it maintained a strong emotional connection with consumers at the master brand level over Apple. Would you be as fortunate as them? Honestly, there’s a one in a billion chance!
Bottom Line: Working your way up the popularity charts is an ongoing process.
Cash In On The Popularity Of A Star Product
A lot of companies benefit from a Halo Effect that stems from the popularity of one of their products. Not only do their other, old products start selling like hot cakes, but even the future products are expected to be well-received.
Here’s how iPod became a halo for the rest of Apple products:
In 2004, Apple focused solely on bombarding the public with ‘TV advertising, print ads and billboards touting its iPod’. The iPod brand took over the world by storm and ‘Apple computer and related businesses were up 27% in fiscal 2005 over the previous year. And, according to industry reports, Apple increased its share of the personal computer market from 3% to 4%.’
Bottom Line: Create a star product and let it work its magic on your catalog.
Ready With A Plan?
Obviously, you are!
Go on and use the Halo Effect to make a genuine connection with your target audience. Get them to like you right from the start, because you never really get a second chance to create an incredible, first impression!
At the same time, remember to conduct usability tests to gather enough data. You’ll ultimately learn what’s working, identify new opportunities to optimize conversion and know where the leaks need repairing.
Have you ever checked your horoscope in the newspaper and thought it was surprisingly accurate? Or maybe you once went for a Tarot card reading and found the interpretation really relevant? This is the Barnum Effect at work.
The Barnum Effect, also called the Forer Effect, can be described as the psychological phenomenon, “that occurs when individuals believe that personality descriptions apply specifically to them (more so than to other people), despite the fact that the description is actually filled with information that applies to everyone.”[Vohs, Kathleen D. “Barnum Effect,” Encyclopædia Britannica 2016].
Rooted in people’s susceptibility to flattery and tendency to believe seemingly authoritative sources, the Barnum Effect means that, if delivered the right way, people will accept generalities as being directly relevant to them.
Origins of the Barnum Effect
The Barnum Effect got its name from the 19th century American showman Phineas Taylor Barnum, who many think coined the phrase, ‘a sucker is born every minute.’ However, it was perhaps the work of psychology professor Bertram Forer in the late 1940s that best illustrates the phenomenon.
Interested in studying personality, Professor Forer decided to conduct a personality test (in the form of a questionnaire) on his class of Introduction to Psychology students. The survey was written in such a way as to make the students believe that each of their unique set of answers would be analyzed and used to give them an individual personality assessment. However, Professor Forer instead gave each student an identical assessment – a paragraph full of generalities that could be true for nearly anyone, such as, ‘You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself.’ [Wiseman, Richard, Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives (London: Macmillan, 2007), chap. 1, Google books]
Surprisingly, on a scale of 1 to 5, 87% of students rated their personality assessment as being very accurate – giving it a score of 4 or 5. Various explanations exist for why the students were so willing to accept the bogus assessment, including human gullibility regarding positive feedback and perceived authority figures.
The Barnum Effect Applied to Conversion Optimization
Though most applicable for activities like fortune-telling or horoscopes, elements of the Barnum Effect can be useful in online CRO strategies. Personalization campaigns, for example, can use ‘generalities’ (messaging to audience segments) to make individual customers feel like they’re being interacted with on a one-to-one basis. Think about product recommendations made ‘just for you,’ or personalization campaigns that rely on user behavioral triggers or in-depth demographic data.
At AB Tasty, we ran a campaign with our client Sephora that involved displaying a promotional banner personalized for loyalty card holders. Loyalty card programs already play on the attraction of exclusivity, and though the personalized banner was shown to all loyalty card holders, people have a tendency to feel these kinds of messages are being directed specifically to them. Incidentally, this banner lead to a 16% increase in transactions on Sephora’s site.
AB Tasty client Sephora displayed a personalized discount banner just to loyalty card holders,exploiting the Barnum Effect.
In a similar vein, you can also personalize promotional banners, pop-ins, or any other part of your site with personalized promo codes or messages that, although generic in nature, nonetheless make consumers feel as if they’re being considered as individuals.
Similarly, another AB Tasty client, fashion retailer Karen Millen, set up a personalization campaign (seen below) to promote discounted items only to customers who had a history of buying items on sale.
Lastly, using a client’s first name, birth date, or other personal information is another way of using generic information in the spirit of the Barnum Effect, to make browsers feel interacted with on a one-to-one level.
Personalized emailings are a particularly effective way of harnessing the Barnum Effect to make clients feel special.
